D&D General Interview with Chris Cocks on D&D AI, the OGL, and more

[mamba]

Definitely some revisionist history in there. The OGL didn't allow anyone to use the D&D brand.

Yeah, almost everything he said in that section is at worst a lie and at best a lot of revision and spin

"Chris Cocks: "Yeah, I mean, that was about a year and a half ago. And that was a serious case of foot and mouth disease. From our perspective, we did it wrong. And we apologized.

"And I think we quickly made amends. I think where we were coming from [00:46:00] on that whole thing, and the open game license for people who don't know, it was something that was established about 20ish years ago. That basically opens up the rule set and some of the core content for Dungeons and Dragons to create a lingua franca rule set and set of content for people to be able to play tabletop role playing games."

"So what we were trying to do is we were trying to evolve it because a document that was created in 2002 didn't foresee the rise of video games. It didn't foresee the rise of AI tools. It didn't foresee even things like content streaming. So our goal there was to try to protect an end user's ability to be able to make content and have fun and a creator's ability to create content and be able to make a living off of it while preventing kind of like a quick serve restaurant from using the D&D brand to sell tacos or a big video game company to be able to create a video game using the IP in a way that wasn't fair to us as the kind of quote unquote brand owners, or maybe do something that we didn't necessarily like with the brand or had content that was inappropriate."

That was not foot in mouth, you were clear on what you wanted, and what you wanted was godawful. That is not a case of being misunderstood. This was not about your IP, no one could use your IP anyway.

 

[mamba]

having BlackRock own 7 million shares of your company (Hasbro) is bad news.

not sure what you expect Hasbro to do about it, they cannot exactly control who buys their stock

 

[mamba]

I know I'm almost totally alone in my take on this, but the CC-BY-4.0 is not more open source than the OGL simply because that particular CC doesn't mandate that new content must be open itself. I know that some people say CC-BY-4.0 is more open because they define "open source" as "what gives the creator(s) the most choice (about what/how much to release)" but my take on it is that "open source" means "what makes the most amount of material available to the community

It definitely is more open, because it places less restrictions on the licensee. You are confusing 'open' and 'open source' and I am not sure the term 'open source' is the correct term for what you talk about either, but I understand what you mean by it, the GPL calls that its viral aspect

 

[Mistwell]

So nothing about how their new Principle AI Engineer job will include having AI generate "NPC behaviors"? Because that sounds a lot like AI DMs to me, which sounds like what a company does if they want to cut out the creatives rather than value them.

That's part of a tool a DM can use to quickly spin up some NPCs, not a replacement for a DM or a replacement for a writer at WOTC. We do this currently and have for a couple years. It would be better if it were a database fed off of WOTC's library of content rather than the public AI engines out there.

 

[Mistwell]

At some point soon I need to start a thread explaining how we use AI for our games. But I will briefly mention the aspect I think has been most useful. We digitally record all our sessions (with player permission), run the audio through a speech to text AI that formats it pretty well with character and NPC names and such, then run a template summary AI page over that text to provide a "Last Session" summary. The last session summary includes a summary of what happened, treasure found, spells and other resources used, goals achieves, goals established but still outstanding, and more. And we use that at the beginning of our next session.

I cannot emphasize how useful this is for our sessions. We used to spend 10 minutes going over what happened before, forgot treasure all the time, that sort of stuff. Now, we have this cool one-sheet that covers it all and we're up to speed much faster.

I have my DM's permission to provide more on this in it's own thread and will do so hopefully soon. It's....pretty rad.

 

[see]

What a stone-cold, bald-faced liar.

Video games were already huge business -- $30 billion worldwide in 1998 (and that's in 1998 dollars), about ten times Hasbro's 1998 worldwide net revenues -- well before the OGL was written. Which is why the WotC/Hasbro-written OGL Software FAQ specifically discussed games, and the d20 System Trademark License specifically excluded "interactive games".

Are they even bigger business now? Yes, sure. But they're hardly some new phenomenon, or even newly-popular phenomenon, that wasn't thoroughly considered back then.

 

[Pedantic]

Overall, not that bad. I think there are a lot of people that won't be satisfied until he says, "It was all my fault because I'm a bad man and I am going to wear a hair shirt," but that's not going to happen.

That's a bit oversalting it, it's much more that WotC wrecked the commons created by the OGL, and doesn't seem particularly contrite about it. Putting the 5e SRD under a new license doesn't actually do anything for all the material made using the OGL in the last 20 years.

I'd prefer some real effort to restore the prior status quo than for Cocks to twirl a mustache and don a monocle, but we're not going to get either. Can't help but notice the 3e and 3.5 SRDs haven't been issued under a Creative Commons license.

 

[Mistwell]

I'd prefer some real effort to restore the prior status quo

How? You can't amend the OGL. What would you suggest be done to return it to what it was before they said what they think they could have done all along with it? A new one with different language does zero for all the stuff that came before so that doesn't restore the prior status quo.

 

[mamba]

Putting the 5e SRD under a new license doesn't actually do anything for all the material made using the OGL in the last 20 years.

with the 5e SRD in CC, WotC couldn’t care less about the OGL and what is available under it. It never was about old material in the first place. Any incentive to go after anything has been removed by releasing the 5e SRD under CC.

Can't help but notice the 3e and 3.5 SRDs haven't been issued under a Creative Commons license.

they are taking their sweet time with that, let’s see what 2025 brings

 

[Charlaquin]

I read the Chris Cocks quote on the OGL mess a few times.

I know very few people will be happy with it. But it's actually a lot better than the usual "Mistakes were made," corporate speak.

He broke it down fairly well:

Yeah, I mean, that was about a year and a half ago. And that was a serious case of foot and mouth disease. From our perspective, we did it wrong. And we apologized.

Started with acknowledging that it was an error, and that they apologized. Okay, the "We" is mealy-mouthed, but still. "We were wrong, we are sorry," is actually unusual for corporations.

I don't see "we are wrong, we are sorry," I see "That was a long time ago and we already said sorry, why won't people stop harping on it?" which... Still not exactly typical for corporations, but far from a good response nonetheless.

And I think we quickly made amends. I think where we were coming from on that whole thing, and the open game license for people who don't know, it was something that was established about 20ish years ago. That basically opens up the rule set and some of the core content for Dungeons and Dragons to create a lingua franca rule set and set of content for people to be able to play tabletop role playing games.

Then moves to an explanation as to what the OGL is. Okay.

A pretty inaccurate explanation that sets him up for the following talking point point, sure.

So what we were trying to do is we were trying to evolve it because a document that was created in 2002 didn't foresee the rise of video games. It didn't foresee the rise of AI tools. It didn't foresee even things like content streaming. So our goal there was to try to protect an end user's ability to be able to make content and have fun and a creator's ability to create content and be able to make a living off of it while preventing kind of like a quick serve restaurant from using the D&D brand to sell tacos or a big video game company to be able to create a video game using the IP in a way that wasn't fair to us as the kind of quote unquote brand owners, or maybe do something that we didn't necessarily like with the brand or had content that was inappropriate.

This is probably the best explanation from their point of view. Worried about making money from the brand, or that people would damage the brand. The one thing that isn't said? Monetizing the brand. Which ... yep. As for AI tools? I think that was just thrown in there because AI is a thing now.

Really? "We didn't know in 2002, two years into the lifespan of what to this day remains the best selling video game console of all time, that video games would be a big thing"?? Literally the OGL was modeled after software licencing at the time. It was specifically intended to insure the longevity of the brand in a rapidly evolving media landscape; far from not forseeing the rise of video games, it was created because they foresaw the rise of video games. It doesn't get more revisionist than this. Yes, we all know that they were worried about other people being able to make money from the brand without them getting a piece. That's exactly why everyone was upset about the decision. This is as revisionist as it gets, and still a terrible defense.

Which happens in, when you have tens of millions of users making content, I think we found a fair and equitable solution to it. You know, if anything, we embraced open source even more.

Weird segue, but ended by correctly saying that in the end, they went with an even better open source model. Although I don't think that they were all willingly embracing it, but you have to put some spin on it.

The one true thing he said. Yes, they did ultimately end up embracing open source even more, and that is ultimately why the backlash mostly subsided. It's weird that he decided to give a weird revisionist take on the reasons behind the decision instead of focusing on this, the one point most critics of the decision will begrudgingly agree about.

Overall, not that bad. I think there are a lot of people that won't be satisfied until he says, "It was all my fault because I'm a bad man and I am going to wear a hair shirt," but that's not going to happen.

Yeah, I mean it's definitely true that it's not going to happen. Doesn't mean we should be accepting of this godawful response.